Izvestia of February 2 carried a letter from a peasant,
G. Gulov, who asks a question about the attitude of our
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government to the middle
peasantry, and tells of rumours that Lenin and Trotsky are
not getting on together, and that there are big differences
between them on this very question of the middle peasant.

Comrade Trotsky has already replied to that in his “
Letter to the Middle Peasants”, which appeared in Izvestia
of February 7. In this letter Comrade Trotsky says that
the rumours of differences between him and myself are the
most monstrous and shameless lie, spread by the
landowners and capitalists, or by their witting and unwitting
accomplices. For my part, I entirely confirm Comrade
Trotsky’s statement. There are no differences between us, and
as regards the middle peasants there are no differences
either between Trotsky and myself, or in general in the
Communist Party, of which we are both members.

In his letter Comrade Trotsky has explained clearly and
in detail why the Communist Party and present
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, elected by the Soviets and
belonging to that Party, do not consider the middle
peasants to be their enemies. I fully subscribe to what Comrade
Trotsky has
said.[2]

There is not a single decree (law) or decision of the
Soviet government which fails to draw a distinction between
the three main groups of peasants. The first group is the
poor peasants (proletarians and semi-proletarians, as they
are usually called in economic science). They are very
numerous. When the landowners and capitalists were in
power, the brunt of their yoke fell on the poor peasants.
In all the countries of the world, the workers and the rural,
poor supporting them are the firmest basis for the true
socialist movement. The second group is the kulaks, that
is, the rich peasants who exploit the labour of others, either
hiring them for work, or lending money at interest, and
so forth. This group supports the landowners and
capitalists, the enemies of the Soviet power. The third group is
the middle peasants. They are not enemies of the Soviet
power. They can be its friends; we are working for this,
and will bring it about. All the teachers of socialism have
always recognised that the workers will have to overthrow
the landowners and the capitalists in order to build
socialism, but that with the middle peasants an agreement is
possible and essential.

Under the landowners and capitalists, only very few of
the middle peasants, perhaps one in a hundred, managed to
secure a stable welfare, and then only by becoming kulaks,
and saddling the poor peasants, whereas the vast majority
of the middle peasants inevitably must suffer from poverty
and ill-treatment by the rich. That is the case in all
capitalist countries.

Under socialism, all workers and all middle peasants to
a man can have full and stable welfare, without robbing
someone else’s labour. No Bolshevik, no Communist, no
intelligent socialist has ever entertained the idea of
violence against the middle peasants. All socialists have
always spoken of agreement with them and of their gradual
and voluntary transition to socialism.

Our country has been ruined more than other countries by
the criminal four-year war of the capitalists. Everywhere
there is ruin and dislocation, lack of goods for sale, and
a terrible and tormenting famine in the towns and
nonagricultural gubernias. We have to strain every effort to
overcome the breakdown, to overcome the famine, to
overcome the troops of the landowners and capitalists, who are
trying to restore to power the tsar and the rich, the
exploiters. In the South, on the Don and in the Ukraine, the
white-guards have been beaten, and the road to fuel (coal) and
grain is being opened up. A few final efforts, and we shall
be saved from the famine. But the destruction left behind
by the war is great, and only long and self-sacrificing work
by all toiling people can bring our country out on to the
road to sustained prosperity.

Two kinds of complaints must be noted among those
being voiced by middle peasants. First, there are complaints
at the excessively “bossy”, undemocratic, and sometimes
absolutely disgraceful behaviour of the local authorities,
especially in the backwoods. Surely it is more difficult
to organise proper control and supervision of the local
authorities’ work in the countryside, and the worst elements
and dishonest people sometimes worm their way into the ranks
of the Communists. Those who, contrary to the laws of
the Soviet power, treat the peasants unjustly must be
ruthlessly fought, immediately removed and most severely
prosecuted. All the efforts of honest workers and peasants
are being directed to purging Russia of these “relics” of
the landowners’ and capitalists’ system who allow
themselves to behave like “bosses” when, under the laws of
our Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic, they should behave
like men elected by the Soviets and set an example of
conscientiousness and strict observance of the laws. The Soviet
power has already shot quite a few such officials caught,
for example, taking bribes, and the struggle against such
scoundrels will be carried on to the end.

Another kind of complaint is made against the
requisitioning of grain and the strict prohibition of free sale of
grain. Our government is fighting inexorably against
arbitrary action and breaches of the law. But can we allow
free sale of grain? In our ruined country, there is not enough,
or barely enough, grain, and in addition the railways
have been so spoiled by the war that supplies are going
very badly.

When there is not enough grain, the free sale of it means
terrific profiteering and inflation of prices up to hundreds
of rubles per pood, because a hungry man will give
anything for a piece of bread. The free sale of grain in a hungry
country means frenzied profiteering by the kulaks, the
shameless rich peasants who fill their money-bags out of
the people’s need and the hunger. The free sale of grain in
a hungry country means a victory of the rich over the poor,
because the rich will buy grain even at a mad, fantastic
price, while the poor will have nothing. The free sale of
grain is freedom for the rich to make profits, and freedom
for the poor to die. The free sale of grain means a return
to the domination and unbridled power of the
capitalists.

No. We don’t want to go back, and will not go back,
to the restoration of the rule of the capitalists, the rule
of money, and freedom to profiteer. We want to go forward
to socialism, to the proper distribution of grain among
all the working people. All grain surpluses must be handed
over to the Soviet state at a fair price; and the state must
distribute them equally among the working people. This
cannot be achieved all at once, it is not easy to establish
such a fair socialist system. It will take a great deal of
work and effort, and strict comradely discipline among
the workers and peasants, to root out the old, capitalist,
freedom to trade, freedom to make profits, freedom to fight,
freedom to oppress—a freedom that has covered the whole
world with blood.

But this difficult work has now been taken up by
millions and millions of workers and peasants. Every honest
peasant and worker has realised the importance of
socialism, and is persistently fighting for it.

The socialist revolution is growing-throughout the world.
The power of the capitalists, “freedom to trade”, will not
return. Socialism will win.

Notes

[1]The letter of G. Gulov, a Red Army man of peasant stock, was
published in Izvestia No. 24, February 2, 1919. Gulov quoted his
talks with middle peasants and said that they were still “not
clear about the status of the middle peasant and the attitude of
the Communist Party to him”. =
He asked Lenin to explain to
Communists “who the middle peasant was and what assistance
he would be able to render our socialist government, given the right
approach to him”. =
For a detailed explanation of the Party’s
attitude to the middle peasantry, see Lenin’s report on work in
the countryside, which he gave at the Eighth Congress of the
R.C.P.(B.) on March 23, 1919, and the resolution of the Congress
on the attitude to the middle peasants (see present edition,
Vol. 29, pp. 198–215 and 217–20).

[2]After the October Revolution, Trotsky for a time formally
accepted the Party’s policy on the peasant question, and he follows this
line in his letter to middle peasants, which Lenin mentions. In
saying that, he had no differences with Trotsky on current policy
in the peasant question, Lenin did not touch upon his differences
with Trotsky on the basic, principled problems of the socialist
revolution and socialist construction in connection with Trotsky’s
“theory of permanent revolution”, which was fundamentally
erroneous and politically harmful. While Lenin and the Party
worked on the premise that, given a correct policy in respect of the
middle peasants, and a sound alliance between the working class
and the peasantry, socialist society could be built in Russia,
Trotsky denied the possibility of socialism winning out in one
country, and spoke, of an inevitable clash between the proletariat
and the peasantry. In 1923, in his theses for the Twelfth Congress
of the R.C.P.(B.), Trotsky put forward the slogan of a “
dictatorship of industry”, which meant the development of industry
through the exploitation of the peasantry. This policy would
have broken up the alliance of the working class and the
peasantry and ruined the Soviet system. In subsequent years, Trotsky
openly opposed Lenin’s plan for the construction of socialism
in the Soviet Union and the Party’s policy and openly waged
a counter-revolutionary struggle against the Soviet power. The
Communist Party routed Trotskyism and other defeatist trends,
secured a sound alliance between the proletariat and the
peasantry and brought the Soviet people to the victory of socialism.